Welcome to Mayflower

The people of Mayflower Congregational UCC Church of Oklahoma City invite you to experience Christianity as a way of life, not a set of creeds and doctrines demanding total agreement. We invite you to join us as we seek to recover the meaning of the gospel for our time, looking to scripture, faith, and reason — interpreted by love. At Mayflower we believe that what Jesus teaches us about God is more important than what the church has taught us about Jesus. We believe in the liberty of conscience, the responsibility of every believer to work out his or her own salvation, and the obligation of faithful men and women to become partners with God in building the kingdom. We take the Bible seriously, not literally, and believe that in our time the church must recover, above all, its radical hospitality — welcoming all persons into her midst, without regard to race, age, gender, sexual orientation, or physical abilities.

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Lori Walke

For far too long we have been the heartland of homophobia and transphobia, depicting the LGBTQ community as predators and terrorists (again and again). In 2016, Oklahoma legislators introduced 26 anti-LGBTQ bills, more than any other state in the nation. In every case, the author of anti-LGBTQ legislation was a lawmaker waving a Bible overhead.

One of those bills, SB 1014, targeted transgender people for discrimination in bathrooms. Supporters of the measure smeared the transgender community by saying the bill was about the safety of women and children. They repeated this claim while ignoring evidence that there is no correlation between assaults in restrooms and allowing transgender people to use the restroom that corresponds with their gender identity.

Lori Walke

Oklahoma is just a month into session, and we have seen multiple attempts to repeal restorative criminal justice reform, prop-up predatory payday lenders who target economically distressed communities in Oklahoma, and codify discrimination.

Either these pious lawmakers are actively working against the tenets of Christianity because they actually have different priorities, or they desperately need help making decisions that reflect the values of Jesus, a non-violent resister who offered preferential treatment for the poor and gave away health care for free.

Rev. Lori Walke of Mayflower Congregational United Church of Christ sees the repeal or amendment of the Johnson Amendment raising issues connected to how the government treats religion.

“It would ultimately be in violation of the establishment clause, because government would end up subsidizing electioneering, church electioneering, by giving a preference to religious institutions over nonreligious institutions via a tax break,” Walke said. “If a church wants to endorse candidates, pay taxes.”

In Oklahoma, the Rev. Lori Walke of Mayflower Congregational United Church of Christ in Oklahoma City spoke out against that state’s RFRA bill and other anti-LGBTQ legislation under consideration, according to the Tulsa World.

“Anti-LGBT legislation couched in phrases like ‘religious freedom’ and ‘right of conscience’ are a waste of time and money, not to mention deeply offensive to LGBT people made in the image of God as well as deeply offensive to the friends and family who love them,” Walke said.

Lori Walke

You have declared Oct. 13 to be Oilfield Prayer Day. You have invited us to, “thank God for the blessings created by the oil and natural gas industry and to seek His [sic] wisdom and ask for protection.”

Robin Meyers

Oklahoma was the first state west of the Mississippi to be called for Donald Trump, and what prouder moment could there be for followers of Jesus? If Hollywood designed the perfect candidate to represent the anti-Christ for evangelicals, he would be thrice married, twice divorced, a builder of casinos, a sexual predator (unless the women are ugly), a liar and a man so in love with himself that his fondest wish is to die in his own arms.

They had risked everything for a chance at a better life. It was one of the many thoughts that ran through Jake Fisher’s head several years ago when spending time with his new friend Hugo and Hugo’s cousins.

Brian Brus

Just before Lawrence Stream died in 2009, he asked the Rev. Robin Meyers to look after his son. His wife had died a few years earlier and their severely autistic son, Larry, an only child, was approaching his 60th birthday as a resident of a special needs care center.

Larry Stream has been a familiar fixture in the balcony seats at Mayflower Congregational Church UCC since he was a teen. Stream, who has autism, remained faithful to the United Church of Christ congregation...